The Crusader Journal

By Ece Toksabay and Mehmet Emin Caliskan ANKARA/AFRIN, Syria (Reuters) – Turkish forces will press their offensive against Kurdish YPG fighters along the length of Turkey’s border with Syria and if necessary into northern Iraq, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. Turkish troops and their rebel allies swept into the northwest Syrian town of Afrin […]

By David Randall NEW YORK, 2018 – U.S. stocks joined a broad decline in global equity markets on Monday as traders turned cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting this week and amid continuing concerns about the threat of a global trade war. At the same time, shares of Facebook Inc shed nearly 7 […]

PARIS (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron’s government plans to tighten controls on the unemployed and increase penalties against those who fail to look hard enough for a job, the labor ministry and union leaders said on Monday. Macron, elected last May on a pro-reform ticket, has already changed labor rules to make it easier […]

TUNIS (Reuters) – A militant blew himself up as Tunisian security forces surrounded him and another fighter in a house near the Libyan border on Monday, the interior ministry said. Forces then shot the second man dead in the coastal town of Ben Guerdan, officials added. A security source said the men were likely to […]

By Mircely Guanipa PUNTO FIJO (Reuters) – Venezuela has arrested the former refining boss of state oil company PDVSA for alleged corruption, two sources told Reuters on Monday, extending a crackdown on the OPEC nation’s ailing oil sector. Veteran oil executive Jesus Luongo joins a list of dozens of oil managers who have been arrested […]

By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Police in Texas fear a serial bomber planted four powerful explosive devices that have killed two people and injured four others this month, raising fears in the state capital Austin of another attack. Investigators said they have no clear idea what motivated the series of attacks, which began […]

By Kirsti Knolle VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria’s capital Vienna once again defended its position as the city offering the best quality of life in the world, while Iraq’s capital Baghdad remains the worst in an annual survey from consulting firm Mercer. Mercer’s survey of 231 cities helps companies and organizations determine compensation and hardship allowances […]

(Reuters) – Mississippi’s governor signed into law on Monday the most restrictive abortion measure in the United States, which was immediately challenged in court by abortion rights advocates who say it is unconstitutional. Republican Governor Phil Bryant said he was proud to sign the bill banning abortion after 15 weeks of gestation with some exceptions, […]

ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigerian security forces were warned about the presence of Boko Haram fighters near the town of Dapchi, but failed to respond, allowing insurgents to kidnap 110 schoolgirls almost unharrassed, Amnesty International said on Tuesday. The kidnapping on Feb. 19 of the girls from Dapchi, aged between 11-19, had echoes of the Islamist […]

By Gabriela Baczynska and Alastair Macdonald BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Britain and the European Union agreed on Monday to a transition period to avoid a “cliff edge” Brexit next year — though only after London accepted a potential solution for Northern Ireland’s land border that may face stiff opposition at home. The pound surged on confirmation […]

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The State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology in Moscow, Russia, March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva

By Christian Lowe, Maria Tsvetkova and Anthony Deutsch

MOSCOW/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The British government says Russia is to blame for poisoning former spy Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent, and most chemical weapons specialists agree.

But they say an alternative explanation cannot be ruled out: that the nerve agent got into the hands of people not acting for the Russian state.

The Soviet Union’s chemical weapons program was in such disarray in the aftermath of the Cold War that some toxic substances and know-how could have got into the hands of criminals, say people who dealt with the program at the time.

“I certainly wouldn’t rule that possibility out, especially a small amount and particularly in view of how lax the security was at Russian chemical facilities in the early 1990s.”

While nerve agents degrade over time, if the pre-cursor ingredients for the nerve agent were smuggled out back then, stored in proper conditions and mixed recently, they could still be deadly in a small-scale attack, two experts on chemical weapons told Reuters.

Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, remain in hospital in critical condition after being found unconscious on a bench in the city of Salisbury on March 4. A police officer was also harmed and remains in a serious condition.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that “there is no alternative conclusion, other than that the Russian state was culpable for the attempted murder of Mr. Skripal and his daughter, and for threatening the lives of other British citizens.”

Russia has denied any involvement in the nerve agent attack.

POISONED TELEPHONE

Accounts of security deficiencies at weapons facilities indicate that, at least for a period in the 1990s, Moscow was not in firm control of its chemical weapons stockpiles or the people guarding them.

When Russian banking magnate Ivan Kivelidi and his secretary died in 1995 from organ failure after a military-grade poison was found on the telephone receiver of his Moscow office, an employee of a state chemical research institute confessed to having secretly supplied the toxin.

In a closed-door trial, Kivelidi’s business partner was convicted of poisoning Kivelidi over a dispute. At the trial, prosecutors said the business partner had obtained the poison, via several intermediaries, from Leonard Rink, an employee of a state chemical research institute known as GosNIIOKhT.

The same institute, according to Vil Mirzayanov, a Soviet chemical weapons scientist who later turned whistleblower, was part of the state chemical weapons program and helped develop the “Novichok” family of nerve agents that Britain has said was responsible for poisoning Skripal.

In a statement to investigators after his arrest, viewed by Reuters, Rink said he was in possession of poisons created as part of the chemical weapons program which he stored in his garage. On more than one occasion, he said, he sold the substances to supplement his income and pay down a debt.

The poison in the Kivelidi case was sold in a deal brokered by an ex-policeman contact of Rink’s. Rink handed over the poison, in an ampoule hidden inside a pen presentation box, in a meeting at Moscow’s Belorussky station, according to his statement.

Rink received a one-year suspended prison sentence for “misuse of powers,” according to Boris Kuznetsov, who was a lawyer for Kivelidi’s business partner during the trial.

Kuznetsov said he believed his client was innocent, and that Kivelidi was poisoned by rogue intelligence officers acting without the knowledge of the Russian president at the time, Boris Yeltsin.

He added that he would share files from the case with the British authorities, because he believed they could be relevant to the Skripal investigation.

Reuters was not able to contact Rink.

STATE OF DISARRAY

The Soviet chemical weapons program was a sprawling operation spread across far-flung provincial cities that incorporated the world’s largest chemical arsenal, publicly declared at 40,000 tonnes.

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, funding dried up, scientists’ salaries were in several months of arrears, staff morale slumped and facilities were left to fend for themselves with little government control or oversight.

According to a 1995 report published by the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington security think-tank, and based on accounts from industry insiders, physical security at the facilities was deficient.

It said railroad entrances to the facilities were padlocked but unguarded, and at some sites chemical weapons were stored in buildings with wooden doors and tiled roofs that an intruder could get into with little difficulty.

Chemical weapons were stored in silos without tamper-proof seals, making it difficult to detect if small quantities were being siphoned off.

A second report by the Stimson Center four years later highlighted the risk of Soviet chemical weapons scientists – who earned a pittance when they were paid at all – being recruited by criminals, terrorists, or rogue states.

“All the ingredients for successful black marketeering are present through the chemical and biological complexes – under- or unemployed, scientists and managers, valuable commodities at far-flung locations, and poor security,” the report said.

SATELLITE STATES

In some cases in the early 1990s, highly toxic chemical agents wound up outside Russian territory, in ex-Soviet facilities in newly-independent states such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.

According to Mirzayanov, the former Soviet chemical weapons scientist, the “Novichok” family of nerve agents developed by the GosNIIOKhT institute was tested in Nukus, Uzbekistan.

In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Mirzayanov, now resident in Princeton, New Jersey, said though he believed the Kremlin was behind the Skripal attack.

The ex-Soviet republics outside Russia that suddenly found themselves hosting ex-Soviet chemical weapons facilities were even less equipped than Moscow to secure them.

U.S. troops who arrived in Uzbekistan after 2001 to establish an air base in the city of Khanabad came across stockpiles of old munitions that had not been accounted for, which turned out to contain chlorine and other chemical compounds, said someone who was present at the time and who spoke on condition of anonymity.

People in the chemical weapons field said security since the 1990s had improved drastically, helped by Western aid, the transfer of weapons stockpiles from neighbouring states to Russia and a stronger Russian state.

Russia’s trade and industry ministry, which oversaw the disposal of chemical weapons stockpiles, said in a statement sent to Reuters that Russia had destroyed 100 percent of the stocks in strict compliance with international commitments, and faster than the United States.

The ministry did not address questions about chemical weapons smuggling in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse.

Ukraine’s state security service, which tracks weapons proliferation, said it had no immediate comment.

The Uzbek foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The state-owned Kazakh nuclear company which operates the Pavlodar Chemical Plant, a former chemical weapons facility, and the Energy Ministry, to which the nuclear company reports, did not reply to questions.